Paul Davis at LAC 2017

[glowrak guy]

My guess is that it's not a moneymaker, and will be low in priority
as long as both versions work, and Mixbus remains a moneymaker.
Strictly a guess.
Cheers

[magicalex]

It's a bit tricky for me right now trying to handle everything - I have a full-time job and I'm learning german, plus I'm changing jobs in one month...

Thank you for all the hard work you do. Not only have your contributions changed the face of Linux audio, but you are always so generous, courteous and patient when dealing with issues/requests etc.

[gimmeapill]

JACK2 development has slowly stopped, with nedko basically leaving linux audio development (at least publically) and stephane being too busy with life/work stuff. Most of jack2 changes recently have been from pull-requests, while stephane only did netjack related updates (I guess because he uses it for his work).
I know the feeling of the community, the lack of updates in JACK2 made it seem like it is a dead project. The dead links on the website don't help either.
So during last LAC in france, I spoke with Stephane directly and he gave me permission to maintain the JACK2 project as well.
I already had access to the git repos, but this confirmed it. I did a new release of JACK2 a few weeks ago, although labelled as RC1 because Windows and Mac builds are still missing. I will handle a few more pull-requests and do another release soon.

This means I'm now maintaining both JACK1 and JACK2.
Now the only missing piece is the website. I spoke with Paul Davis during LAC to figure out how we could handle this.
He tried to integrate it with github so the website automatically updated. That failed, and he gave me access to the website machine last week.
As soon as possible I'll update the JACK website setup so it gets the contents from the git repo semi-automatically (I just have to run a command).
Hopefully this speeds up development and interest on the website once again.

(a bit on a personal side now...)
It's a bit tricky for me right now trying to handle everything - I have a full-time job and I'm learning german, plus I'm changing jobs in one month...
But I see the lack of manpower and can't just stay still while the projects die...
I stopped the german classes for now, so my evenings are mostly free. I don't want to overwork myself though, I've seen it happen before and will take it easy so things get done even if on a slow pace. I have a list of tasks I want to do for this month, within reasonable limits.
But you should expect the JACK website to be updated soon, then some JACK1 and JACK2 changes from pull-requests, and then a new JACK2 release (this time 1.9.12, as 1.9.11 number has been used for far too long).

Thanks for the clarification falkTX, and of course for stepping up in getting the jack project back on the rails - even if it's not moving very fast for the time being

Don't overwork yourself dude - I've seen enough developers burn out over the years and it would be real sad to have another pillar of the community drop the towel...
The Jack project just needs a bit of communication with a status update, this will set people's expectations straight (mine included) and give you hopefully some time to breathe).

Cheers,

LX

[nils]

falkTX, now that you are the maintainer of both do you think there is any possibility that we will have a united jack one day.

I know the technical differences and difficulties, but are they enough to justify the confusion that these versions create for the users and even in distributions? And "politically" or rather strategically for the linux audio public appearance this is a piece of redundancy and fragmentation that would be relatively painless to solve.

I don't mean deleting anything but rather announcing "Jack3" and calling it the only official version everyone should use.

[GuntherT]

Thank you, falkTX, for the detailed response and all of your hard work.

[lucianodato]

Go falktx!

[lucianodato]

Falktx you are awesome! Thanks for everything you do! Kind of related to previous discussions -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euj_WDjK_0s

[folderol]

Just want to add my thanks to falkTX for taking on this extremely important part of Linux audio

[asbak]

And finally add to jack2 whatever features are currently jack1 specific - that being a2jmidi + zita-aj clients and working meta-data implementation.

That's very interesting, does this mean that zita-aj doesn't work with jack2? I use jack2 and never managed to get zita-aj working and never understood why I couldn't get it to produce any sound. Or am I misunderstanding the issue?

[tramp]

It's a bit tricky for me right now trying to handle everything - I have a full-time job and I'm learning german, plus I'm changing jobs in one month...

Did that mean you are leaving the MOD dev team?

[GMaq]

Yes, that is correct.

+1

Seriously though, truly wish you the very best with your new opportunity

I know you will be missed by many in the MOD community, but you have to live your life. Whoever it is will be very fortunate to have such a brilliant mind and a patient and level-headed person working with them.

[forestandgarden]

Hum, so it was a good idea to kick this one off.

I was actually prepared to critically take apart Paul Davis' speech, but now I rather invest time to try and gage what this topic has grown into. I thought everybody was at the beach.

@falkTx if I can assist with learning german - tambien hablo castellano, si esto sirve de algo. Might point you to book2.de (sort of a branch of the Goethe-Institut) free language audio courses. And you can make a free 'poor student' account that gives you 72h I think to make a local copy of the full interactive online course corresponding to the audios. Not the most brilliant course, but gets you going. And this might be gold: https://www.amazon.com/Reise-Know-How-K ... B016777L06 , not saying you should necessarily order it from there - the unconventional concept of Kauderwelsh (gibberish) language guides is brilliant indeed, although I don't know that particular one.

[ssj71]

I was actually prepared to critically take apart Paul Davis' speech...

Hmm, I feel like Paul pretty well called it like it is. I'm curious what counter arguments you offer.

[forestandgarden]

A word of caution, with taking apart, I'm talking about the speech, not the man - like with everybody, that's probably a question of getting to know a person.
I might remark here that it probably goes a little unnoticed that hundreds of people are spending hours or dozens of hours (on youtube, irc, forums) to passively figure out how Paul ticks. Trying to raise the issue of the attention balance here, not speculating about intentions, and admittedly a lot of this is in the nature of the game. Yet worth a thought or two.

By and large, I feel the speech touches a bit on everything and doesn't give much of a conclusion, save 'we might focus on browser interfaces next'.

@ssj71 So if you really want to challenge me to give 'counter arguments', I'd challenge you to give a point-by-point listing of what the speech actually says. I'm not saying no points exist, but it is a lot of work to properly extract concise statements that make sense in written rather than spoken form, cite with exactitude, etc.. I have not even had the time to read all the thread since I opened it - and I'm not sure if there's a need or sense in properly kicking off a discussion now, maybe most people have said what they had to say by now and the thread has lost focus already. Anyway, here are some of the things that stuck in my mind since downloading the talk, and I'll find time to come back here and look for comments on these thoughts:

The bits on Audacity are, since the word 'ugly' has fallen already, a bit ugly themselves IMHO, but we know that such judgements lead nowhere, so let's say that if Audacity is so successful, probably a lesson can be learned from that.

A similar impression is left on me by the hushed remarks on not praising jack anymore, not many explanations given, but maybe it is expected that Paul's opinions on jack be known.

Since Paul has heard all sorts of opinions and criticism, it is a bit hard to judge how much of it he is still taking into account, since for every possible user demand or opinion, he can produce an instance of just the opposite demand made or opinion uttered.

Intending to compensate for the gloomy note produced by the word 'failures' in the title, Paul points out where he sees the strengths of linux - the vast amount of free quality libraries, which - point taken! - don't free a coder from developing quality solutions himself, couldn't agree more, then it comes: A large amount of users ready to break Ardour in every possible way. Of course we know what he means, the readiness of linux users to engage in the process of debugging, even if it takes devs lots of energy to pinpoint problems from often vague user statements, and that could be me.

There is, nonetheless, a fundamental misconception here: Users are not trying to break things. They are trying to use, and they'd like it much better if nothing broke.

[khz]

http://klang.eudyptula.org/

Sounds very interesting! Any audio expert with some thoughts about this?

@CrocoDuck: @Klang: viewtopic.php?p=29685#p29685